Discover London's Gruesome History at the London Dungeon

With half a day left, I entertained myself with a visit to the infamous London Dungeon. At first I thought it was a real dungeon but I later found out the building was previously used for other purposes before it was transformed into an interactive theatre. Located in one of London’s earliest settlements, a neighbourhood once notorious for hosting dog and cock fights, the building has a number of old arches, which were used to support London’s first passenger railway before it was turned into a stable block then later became a wine cellar and possibly an orphanage. During the time of Henry VIII, the building was an infirmary that housed unwed mothers and treated prostitutes with sexually transmitted diseases. It was used as an air raid shelter during WWII and is thought to have been hit by a German bomb, killing up to 67 people. Some of the bodies were never found and are believed to be behind parts of the brickwork. According to the British TV show Most Haunted, over the years there have been many ghost sightings by both the staff and public. In 1976, the building was taken over by Merlin Entertainments and transformed into a museum of horrible history and interactive theatre recreating some of London’s goriest past.

I purchased a ticket and waited at the door until an eerie looking man in a white wig came out and told us to follow him. After walking past displays depicting ancient British methods of torture, such as being boiled alive and sawed in half, we stopped in front of a stage where we received a lesson on how to use middle aged torture tools. Torture was often used to extract confessions from alleged criminals, punish convicted criminals and intimidate people. Prisoners accused of high treason were at one time hanged, drawn and quartered. Not a pretty process. First the victim was hanged by the neck until they were almost dead and then cut open so their guts and genitals could be removed and burned on a fire while they watched. Finally they were beheaded and their body was divided into four parts and put on display in various places throughout the city to deter would-be–traitors who may have missed the execution. Things improved in 1814 – convicts were hung and mutilated only after they had died and by 1870 the practice was abolished all together. Next, we were summoned to a court room where we were condemned in a mock trial and sent on a rather chilling boat ride through “Traitor’s Gate”. Built by Edward I in the 17thcentury, Traitor’s Gate was where prisoners, who were transported via the Thames River, entered the Tower of London after passing under London Bridge where the heads of recently executed prisoners were displayed on pikes. This is how Anne Boleyn, Sir Thomas More, Queen Catherine Howard and Elizabeth I, were brought to the tower. After catching our breath, we were brought to an operating room to learn about the various ways people tried to prevent the plague such a wearing ridiculous bird masks. The Great Plague of 1665-1666 was a massive outbreak that killed thousands of people in London. While smaller than the “Black Death” pandemic of 1347-1353, it was remembered as the Great Plague because it was one of the last widespread outbreaks in England. The horrible disease turned patches of the victim’s skin black and wiped out entire communities, leaving corpses in the streets with no one to bury them. Because the incubation period took a mere 4-6 days, once the plague made an appearance in a house it was sealed off with the words “Lord have mercy on us” painted across the door in red and the entire household was condemned to death. In the evenings, people would shout “Bring out your dead” and the corpses were thrown onto a cart and taken to the plague pits. The children’s song “Ring a Ring O’Roses” is actually a macabre parody on the horrors of the Great Plague. One of the signs of the plague was rose-colored spots and it was believed that a posy of herbs or “a pocket full of posies” would cure it. Sneezing was a sure sign of impending death hence the line “Atishoo! Atishoo! The final line “we all fall down” omits the word dead. In the next room, we watched a film about the Great Fire of London which started in a bakery on Pudding Lane and spread rapidly through central London on September 2nd - 5thof 1666. It consumed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches and numerous city buildings. A simple-minded French watchmaker was made the scapegoat after having confessed to starting the fire in Westminster. He later changed his story and said he started it at the bakery. After he was tried and hanged, it was discovered that he had not arrived in London until two days after the fire had started. In the long run, the fire turned out to be a good thing for London because it burned down the unsanitary housing that was responsible for attracting rats and fleas. When the city was rebuilt, improvements in hygiene and fire safety were put in place. Our tour ended with a film about Jack the Ripper, one of the most infamous serial killers of all time. In 1888 he was responsible for the gruesome killings of five prostitutes in the Whitechapel district of London. He was never caught and his true identity remains a mystery to this day. The facts that he liked to cut the throats of his victims then mutilate their abdominals and sometimes remove their internal organs led investigators to believe he possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.